


The Young Cigarette Man

by JustSemiotics



Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: Fairy Tales, Gen, Hans Christian Andersen - Freeform, If you know the fairy tale you know where this is going, The Little Match Girl - Freeform, letswritesherlock Challenge 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 18:53:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustSemiotics/pseuds/JustSemiotics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the letswritesherlock Fairy Tale challenge. I love Hans Christian Andersen´s "The little match girl". It´s more of a rewrite, but I have been reading it as a Sherlock Story for quite some time now, so...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Young Cigarette Man

Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening-- the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street of London a young, restless man, bareheaded, and with naked torso. When he left home he had a coat and a scarf on, it is true; but what was the good of that? It was a very large coat and a beautiful scarf; and the young man had lost them as he ran through the street, because he needed to run so dreadfully fast.

The scarf was nowhere to be found; the coat had been given to a homeless, and off he ran with it. So the young man walked on with his naked torso, which was quite red and blue from cold. He carried a packet of cigarettes in his trousers, and held his mobile in his hand. Nobody had texted him the whole livelong day; no one had given him a single case.

He crept along trembling with cold and doubts--a very picture of sorrow!

The flakes of snow covered his dark hair, which fell in beautiful curls around his head; but of that, of course, he never once now thought. From all the windows the candles were gleaming, and people where going on with their boring, for you know it was New Year's Eve; yes, of that he thought.

In a corner formed by two houses, of which one advanced more than the other, he seated himself down and cowered together. His feet he had drawn close up to his chest, but he grew colder and colder, and to go home he did not venture, for he had not solved any cases and could not bring an end to his boredom: from his brother he would certainly get talks, and at 221B it was cold too, for the windows were still blown out in the livingroom, through which the wind whistled, even though the largest cracks were stopped up with papers and rags.

His hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a cigarette might afford him a world of comfort, if he only dared take a single one out of the package, lit it, and warm his lips by it. He drew one out. It was a small, but warm flame, as he closed his lips over it and drew a deep breath: there was wonderful white smoke and light. It seemed really to the young man as though he was sitting in his armchair in front of the fireplace, with the skull on the manteltop and the gentle clicking of fingers on a laptop behind him. The typing proceeded with such blessed slowness; it calmed so delightfully. He had already turned his head to look ; but--the cigarette went out, the fireplace and the typing vanished: he had only the remains of the burnt-out fag in his hand.

He enkindled another cigarette: it burned brightly, and where the smoke fell on the wall, there the wall became transparent like a veil, so that he could see into the room. It was restaurant, on the table was spread a red and white checkered tablecloth; upon it was a service set up for two, and the wineglasses radiated in the light of the single candle on the table. And what was still more capital to behold was, the door of the restaurant opened and the owner walked up to welcome the guest, who was hidden behind his back, and already he was leading him up to the table, till they came to halt in front of the young man, when--the match went out and nothing but the thick, cold, damp wall was left behind. 

He enflammed another cigarette. Now he was standing at the most magnificent crime scene: it was still smaller, and more complicated than the one which he had been given by the consulting criminal. Thousands of details were to be observed, and sharply made deduction flew around his head. The young man stretched out his hands towards them when--the cigarette went out. The deductions rose higher and higher, he saw them now as stars in the sky; one fell down and formed a long trail of fire.

"Someone is just dead - or so people would say!" said the young man; for his only friend, the single person in the world who had cared for him, and who was now no more, had told him, that when a star falls, a soul ascends.

He lit another cigarette: there was again smoke, and in the fume there stood his friend, so steadfast and loyal so mild, and with such an expression of love.

"John!" cried the young man. "Oh, take me with you! You go away when the cigarette burns out; you vanish like the flat, like the table at Angelo´s, and like the magnificent crime scence!" And he lighted up the whole pack of cigarettes, for he wanted to be quite sure of keeping his friend near him. And the cigarettes gave such a brilliant smolder: never formerly had the friend been so unwound and so contented. He took the young man at his wrist, and both flew in brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then above was neither cold, nor doubt, nor anxiety. 

But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the young man, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall--frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the detective there with his cigarettes, of which one package had been burned. "He wanted to kill himself," people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things he had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with his friend he had entered on the joys of a new year.


End file.
